The average "autophile" might prefer the growl of a Ford Mustang to the sweet melodies of a Stradivarius. But the challenge presented to director and classical music fanatic Noam Murro by an Ogilvy, London script for Ford - to conduct an orchestral shoot with musicians using instruments fashioned from car parts - was like a siren's call.

"My favorite thing is to get in the car at midnight, drive around Los Angeles, and listen to Beethoven's string quartets, opera, anything," enthuses Murro. "When this came along, it made me crazy. I had to do it.

"Basically [the script said] let's create strange instruments from this car, create an orchestra as a metaphor for the car, and make beautiful, if odd, music with them," he says of "Orchestra". The spot simply shows, as the name suggests, an orchestra of instruments made from the new Ford Focus.

The spot is the latest in a concerted effort from Ford in the UK and Ogilvy, which over the last 18 months has sought to reinvigorate the brand's image, says Ogilvy Europe creative director Greg Burke. The new focus (pun intended) on realigning the brand with beauty and creativity, rather than with engineering and price-point oriented advertising, has attracted top directorial talent like Philippe Andre and - filming at time of press - Nicolai Fuglsig.

"Obviously, 'This car is beautiful' is one of the most over-trodden briefs in history," explains Burke. "We wanted not just to express that the car was beautiful, we wanted to express creativity. One starts looking at areas like the arts - music and design - and it was thinking along those lines that led to making something beautiful out of the car itself."

Initially, the script called for musicians to play the car pieces in locations where one might find a car: on the side of the road or in a parking lot. However Murro felt a singular vision would be stronger, so he and the creatives settled on filming an orchestra playing a piece on a soundstage. From this seemingly simple idea came the immense challenge of creating instruments from the car that could produce credible, beautiful music.

Authenticity was key. "It was one of those things where from the very beginning Noam and the agency agreed this was a project that would have to be truly authentic to make it worth doing," says Biscuit Filmworks producer Jay Veal. Fine in theory, but daunting. Fortunately, the idea of recycling a car for musical means had been tried before. "We did a ton of research and we found a guy in Pennsylvania called Bill Milbrodt who had made some instruments from a car before... it was called The Car Music Project."

In 1994 Milbrodt had dismantled his aging, 200,000-mile wearied Honda and, assembling a group of friends, created instruments from it and toured as a band, even releasing an album. His unique experience deemed him perfectly placed to undertake the Ford project in the short time frame required.

Sonically, The Car Music Project was experimental, and there were questions about whether a more refined sound could be coaxed from the car. To ensure this, Murro enlisted composer Craig Richey - with whom he had worked on Smart People, his feature debut - to closely liaise with Milbrodt on what sounds the relatively imprecise instruments (in comparison to standard musical fare) could achieve in speed of play, pitch and tone. Richey then wrote a series of six classical compositions within those parameters, which were presented to Murro and the agency who, remarkably, unanimously agreed on one.

The task of designing and building the instruments then began. Two of the new cars were shipped to Milbrodt's workshop in Pennsylvania and duly dismantled into their constituent parts. He and production designer Brock Houghton worked over two months building the instruments to the specifications of the score, which were then shipped to Capitol Studios in LA.

Richey and musician David Low assembled an orchestra from session musicians who they felt were flexible and experienced enough for the task. Rehearsals took place over one day, and the ensemble spent two days recording the individual elements of the track, a short amount of time considering the unusual nature of the instruments. The recording was mastered to amplify and tonally correct some of the instruments for the final track, before the relatively straightforward two-day shoot at Universal Studios in LA.

"It's not an exact science," says Ogilvy, London agency producer James Brook-Partridge of the recording process. "Some of the instruments like the double bass worked really well, but some like the flute needed to be played by someone with a lot of training playing ethnic instruments, because it didn't function like an actual flute would. You need to be good at holding your hands over the right parts to get the right sound out of them. They do function, it's just about getting the musicians' heads around working in slightly different ways."

The most difficult instrument to play, he says, was a trombone made of shock absorbers. "If a trombone player picked it up now and tried to get sounds out of it it'd be a struggle to be consistent because the slide's a bit stiff," he laughs. "But if you had a couple of months work on it you could get it to play very well."

As befits any new musical movement, plans are already afoot to have the car (or at least its parts) tour, says Burke, and a collaboration is already in the works. "We're negotiating with a British singer to use the guitar on her new album and in her video."

Ogilvy, London http://www.ogilvy.co.uk
Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles http://www.biscuitfilmworks.com
Car Music Project http://www.carmusicproject.com